July-August 2005

Ocwen agreement brings hope, help to Pittsburgh homeowner 

Danise Cain approached Pittsburgh Community  Reinvestment Group (PCRG) in the winter of 2004.

She was frustrated because she had been making payments on a forbearance agreement with her loan servicer Ocwen Financial Services for “a long  time” and the balance never went down.

Cain lives in a modest, well-kept home in a working class neighborhood in the city of Pittsburgh. Some blocks surrounding hers are falling away to blight but she and her neighbors struggle to remain in their homes. Most homes show signs of being “house proud” and families have lived in the same homes for decades.

In the late 1990s, Danise found herself with health issues that follow her to this day. She had always worked and taken care of her family, but now she could not. As a result, the income she had always enjoyed was no longer available because she could no longer work as she once had. With mounting bills, she turned to a mortgage broker to refinance her home and to free up money to pay bills that had gone unpaid since her health problems began.
 Instead of finding peace of mind and payments she could afford, she found herself with a loan with a fixed interest rate of over 13 percent with no escrow and the prospect of never being able to pay the loan off.

Cain fell behind on her mortgage payments and entered into a repayment agreement. Even though she was now on disability income of less than $800 per month, Cain was able to make her monthly forbearance payments that ate over half that amount every month. She was frugal, took advantage of utility programs and other social programs. She struggled. She prayed. Sometimes she cried.  She relied on her son who moved nearby for transportation and sometimes additional help, but she didn’t like to bother him. He had a family, too, she said.

Working with Joanne Perez at Ocwen through PCRG and utilizing NPA's national partnership agreement with Ocwen, Cain was able to obtain a loan modification that cut her payment in half. She met with Ocwen officials on a recent city tour in Pittsburgh and expressed her thanks. She will now be able to remain in her home and a great worry has been lifted from her shoulders. She told Ron Faris, Ocwen's president, as he stood on her porch about her neighborhood, its worth, their struggle and that this community was worth investing in and saving. She is optimistic. Cain feels that she and the neighborhood have a future. Faris was in town for a   neighborhood tour that is part of the national agreement.